SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge has ruled in favor of a company that sued a competitor for patent infringement in a case over SIM-card technology.
The ruling involved a suit brought by Hong Kong uCloudlink Network Technology Limited (UCL) against SIMO Holdings Inc.
“The dispute between the parties essentially concerns the term ‘insertable,’” U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen wrote in his ruling. “UCL argues that ‘insertable’ means capable of being inserted, whereas SIMO argues that ‘insertable’ must mean actually inserted or the invention does not work, i.e., is not operable.”
Chen concluded, “UCL has the better argument."
UCL argued that the patents for its technology specify that a SIM card “may” be inserted.
SIMO contends that making a SIM card optional renders the “entire claimed invention inoperable.”
The judge called SIMO’s argument “not persuasive because it fails to take into account UCL’s concession that, at some point in time, a SIM card is inserted in order for the invention to work.”
The judge sided with UCL on other word choices throughout the patent that were challenged by SIMO, such as “simulate” and “service sharing."
“SIMO’s argument is not persuasive,” the judge wrote, referring to the definition of "simulate." “There is no real dispute between the parties that ‘simulate' means something along the lines of ‘imitate.’”
At one point in the ruling, the judge addressed the issue of whether the word “to” should be interpreted as “of."
Chen also rejected SIMO’s claims that UCL’s patent’s definition of “SIM function” is indefinite.
However, the judge did say that UCL’s definition of that term was “problematic,” because it refers to ‘functions’ (plural) rather than ‘function’ (singular) and fails to provide "any specificity on what the function actually is.”
The judge adopted his own language instead: “the function of a SIM, i.e., a means by which a service provider authenticates a subscriber, thus enabling the subscriber to use her user equipment to enjoy services provided by the service provider.”
Hong Kong uCloudlink Network Technology Limited et al. v. SIMO Holdings Inc. et al., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, 18-CV-05031